Dark SOuls Demo at TOy Fair

This weekend at Toy Fair in NYC, I was lucky enough to play the Dark Souls board game. Not a whole playthrough, but just one boss fight: The Dancer.

A brief history on Dark Souls the Board Game; it was Kickstarted last year and successfully backed by 31,178 backers totaling 3,771,474 Euros. This was Steamforged’s first Kickstarter project and it was a huge success. They are not completely new to the gaming industry, as they have had a few games going around for a while. Needless to say, landing the Dark Souls license was a huge win for their company. What’s even better is the product is coming out on time and the game plays wonderfully and feels very true to the Dark Souls games. Meaning when I play this with friends, tables will be flipped and somehow I will break another controller.

The demo setup at Toy Fair was just one boss fight; The Dancer. The situation was it was 2 players, the Herald and the Warrior, and we used up all our flasks and abilities, but had no damage or stamina used. The guy who did the demo for us said “you guys were noobs and used all your stuff and still decided to go into a boss fight”. Well, that’s Dark Souls anyway.

The board was setup with us (the players) at the front and the boss in the middle of the tile. Each tile has a skull icon which is where the boss starts. The Dancer had the first turn. Bosses have an AI deck that they draw from to determine what move and attack they do. It also shows where their weak spot is until their next turn. It isn’t always the back, and sometimes they don’t have a weak spot at all. The card used was predetermined to show us the mechanics of the game, like any great and annoying tutorial in a video game does. The attack would hit both players and we had to decide how to handle the attack, which would be block or dodge (roll).

Having more defense dice from my gear, the Herald is supposed to block. After rolling my dice, I blocked 3 of the 5 damage, hitting me with two. The warrior had better dodge rolls and rolled to clear out of the way and take no damage. In order to roll out of the way, you decide what adjacent space you want to roll to, add 1 stamina, then make your roll. Regardless of if you succeed or not, you still moved to the new space. Thankfully, he succeeded.

After the Dancer had their turn, it was up to me. I was in the Dancer’s weak spot and went for an attack. The weapon I had allowed me to either roll 1 black die for free or 2 dice for 3 stamina. Since I was in the weak spot, I was given 1 additional black die to roll regardless of the attack I chose and the dice used. I opted for the free attack and rolled 3 damage. After that, the boss went again. My teammate and I succeeded in being safe from the attack and then it was their turn.

A few more turns later, my teammate had an opportunity and went all out spending 7 stamina to make 2 big attacks bringing the Dancer down to half health. Unfortunately, when that happens, the boss gets a special new attack added to the deck and is shuffled. All bosses have this mechanic when they reach half health. For those familiar with Dark Souls, bosses have different stages and moves depending on their health. Typically it’s 2 stages. This stage the Dancer brought out their fire sword and a new move was added.

The deck was shuffled, a card was drawn, and it was that move and it killed my teammate. We lost. But I was alive! Doesn’t matter. When one person dies, everyone dies. This adds a huge amount of strategy and rage when playing with more players. The game is 1 – 4 players and the game goes Player, Boss, Player, Boss, etc. Meaning, when you are playing with 4 players, a player has to survive 4 boss actions before it’s their turn again putting a huge emphasis on positioning.

Even though the demo would be the same for everyone at Toy Fair, when playing it with friends, it’s a very different story. The bosses can be different and each has a deck of cards for their actions. You don’t use the entire deck. Just randomly pick out a set amount so the bosses moves are different from game to game.

They didn’t go into how to level up other than just killing enemies, but each player card has different tiers which increase your stats allowing you to equip more weapons and items. Weapons, Armor and Items all have stat requirements to fulfil before you can use them, allowing certain classes to use certain items. Since we didn’t play the actual game, I don’t know how easy it is to find new weapons and armor outside videos I’ve watched.

Steamforged Games did an amazing job with this. I regret not making it work to Kickstart this and get a LOT of extras from that. Fortunately, I have a good friend who was smart enough to Kickstart this and I am glad he did. Steamforged has a lot of extra content coming out which you can see on the their Kickstarter, and more told to us that isn’t on their Kickstarter that they are looking to do.

I encourage everyone to go to their local gaming store and inquire about Dark Souls. If your store is getting it, ask about demos happening and if you can be a part of it.